For some time Oliver has been saying that he’d like to go on a bicycle tour. The timing was perfect for him, but I warned him that it wouldn’t be easy — unpleasant ferry times and too much heat. Who would want to cycle the Greek islands in June anyway? Well, I had plans to meet my cousin and his family in Crete so why not make a little trip out of it? It was Oliver’s first bicycle tour, and what turned out to be difficult for him wasn’t the heat but the hills. The climbs were not very long or very steep (for me), but it’s quite different if you’re not used to it.
We started with a bus from Antalya to Bodrum, camped one night, and got the ferry the next morning to Kos. We spent about 12 hours in Kos, but that was our choice. Within Greece the reasonably-priced ferries (Blue Star and similar) seem to run once or twice a week so you take what you can get. As an example there are daily ferries between Santorini and Crete for about 93 euro/person, or you wait for Blue Star (on Wednesday or Friday only) for 16 euro/person. On the other hand, the ferries between Turkey and Greece mostly run daily and are all expensive so we could have stayed in Kos as many days as we liked (by arriving earlier).
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